There are a variety of types of conventional closures for containers. One type of closure includes a body or base for being attached to an open end or mouth of a container that may contain contents such as a product—the closure, container, and product together defining a “package”. Products contained within the container may be fluent products, as well as non-fluent products.
A closure can be molded or otherwise manufactured from a suitable material (e.g., a thermoplastic material). Such a closure typically has a hollow body or base that, when installed at the open end of the container, defines an opening or access passage to the container interior. Such a closure typically includes a lid (which may or may not be hingedly mounted on the closure base) that can be lifted up to expose the container open end.
For some types of products, it can be desirable to provide a closure that has a valve with: (1) an unpressurized, closed condition for occluding the hollow closure body; and (2) a pressurized, open condition for allowing product to be dispensed from, or accessed within, the container interior through the hollow closure body.
With some such closures, a membrane or liner may be disposed across a lower portion of the closure and the container open end to seal the product from the ambient environment. Some liners may have one or more cut or exposed edges that are exposed to the open interior of the container. Such exposed liner edges may come into contact with the contained product. The inventors of the present invention have found that some liners having a metal component (e.g., aluminum), used on a container of an acidic product (e.g., ketchup), may cause undesirable changes to the acidic product (e.g., discoloration, taste changes) when the exposed metallic liner edge interacts with the acidic product.
The inventors of the present invention have determined that it would be advantageous to provide an improved closure with a liner for a container. In particular, the inventors have discovered that this innovative closure design provides advantages not heretofore contemplated in the packaging industry or suggested by the prior art.